Asimov had some good ideas, but we need to, you know, actually write some laws now:

As they become smarter and more widespread, autonomous machines are bound to end up making life-or-death decisions in unpredictable situations, thus assuming—or at least appearing to assume—moral agency. Weapons systems currently have human operators “in the loop”, but as […]

Ekso Bionics is a company to watch. Building exoskeletons for everyday use by paraplegics is their goal by 2014. Erika Strickland’s “Good-bye, Wheelchair, Hello Exoskeleton” highlights the progress of some of Ekso’s first patients and the potential in the near future:

What people are able to do with the Kinect and Wii continues to blow my mind. Nintendo and Microsoft would do the world a great service if they opened-up their tech to the mod community for non-profit purposes.

I too was curious as to how the alien race that are the Transformers managed to evolve. Furthermore, why did they evolve into an easily distinguishable set of races based on morality. You realize this, no? There are two races of Transformer, AutoBots and Decepticons. They look, think, transform, and behave differently.